MacOS vs. Windows

Everyone told that it's the kind of thing that we see everywhere but, I never found one...

What about TCO? Reliability? Performance?

Why don't you run Windows?
Why don't you run MacOS?

Here I start:

- Security with Windows? No problems, don't use IE. Use an anti-virus and a firewall.
- Anti-virus? There are plenty of free ones.
- Firewall? If you don't want the cheesy one coming with the OS, get a free one!
- Anti-spyware? If you don't have IE you normally don't even need one. What else, there are free ones!
- Total cost of ownership with Windows? Apart from the OS itself, it's FREE! How? Get free software. There are plenty of free EXCELLENT spyware free software.
- You don't have to use the machine from the OS' company to make it work.
- More hardware choice
- Every times I(And I say I) use a Mac, it freezes or there's a bug at least once.

Personally, it's the little things in Windows that I hate that aren't in OSX, like applications stealing focus, user interface getting in my way and taking too much space etc. OSX is just designed better for my logic.

I don't like the way the desktop is set up on macs. I really like XP's interface, and reliability. It may have problems, but they're easy to fix. The main deciding factor for me is that almost all of the great Computer games are for PC.

Mac OS X has one feature that Windows should try to implement: the 'history' view when browsing folders. If you keep going deeper into directories, the window keeps track of the contents of each folder you've visited in a left-right-scrolling history bar. An excellent idea, I thought.

That's not to say OS X is without flaws. The control panels seem to assume they know what's best, and don't allow much custimization. Defragmenting is poorly-implemented. Program uninstallation is confusing.

To use Neal Stephenson's analogy, the Mac is an attractive-looking car with hermetically-sealed innards; nobody knows how to fix it, but it rarely breaks, so nobody cares. The Windows machine is a bicycle with a scramjet on it; it has any number of issues, but they're all easy to fix, and upgrades are easy, too. More importantly, when your bicycle and scramjet are working properly (when you have it tweaked Windows to perfection), the luxury car seems slow in comparison.

Well, ye olde performa 6400 runs OS9, kind of. The main annoyance there is the way when I fill up the 2gig scsi drive, It takes down the whole OS. Reboot results in the disk with a question mark on it. The disk tools don't recognize it at that point either, a full reinstall seems to be required.

I always customize my os9 interface to be like windows, by putting links to all my programs into the apple menu, and using said apple menu as if it were the Start menu.

That OS9 was terrible at running a bunch of proggies at once!!! With 64 megs of RAM, an iMac g3 400MHz could run dreamweaver, and maybe alpha (text editor). While designing websites, you want a couple browsers and photoshop open too, but no go with that OS. Win 98 on a 400 MHz PII and 64Megs Ram could keep many more apps open at once. Win98 really sucked in other ways, though.

Hopefully I'll have a machine running OSX within a couple of months, to compare that vs WinXP

Well, ye olde performa 6400 runs OS9, kind of. The main annoyance there is the way when I fill up the 2gig scsi drive, It takes down the whole OS. Reboot results in the disk with a question mark on it. The disk tools don't recognize it at that point either, a full reinstall seems to be required.

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*inux systems have this issue still today. Never never let the root partition fillup or you can be in such trouble the only way out is to reformat the partition.
The proactive approach is to make a /tmp partition of its own and then monitor the / partition usage.

What I REALLY hate with MacOS is the Finder, how you install/uninstall apps and shortcuts.

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The literature attributes the Finder as being THE major characteristic of Mac.
Internally, the Filesystem records two attributes to each file;
the file Type {eg: text, APPL, doc,*} and
a Creator {MSWD, EXCL, QKBK}
All files which default to MSWD will be opened by MS Word, but
any program that can at least read this format are found by a list like Creator/*, Type/doc.

While we're this close to implementation, FYI: there's no registry in Mac :giddy:
Yea, there's special desktop db that is easily rebuild at boot time by holding
the <opt><cmd> keys down until you get the prompt, but applications don't write config data there, so just guess, there's no regedit either :giddy:

I don't like the way the desktop is set up on macs. I really like XP's interface, and reliability. It may have problems, but they're easy to fix. The main deciding factor for me is that almost all of the great Computer games are for PC.

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There are some that strongly suggest that with the FreeBSD underpinnings, the MacOS/Intel development will soon lead to the MacOS desktop showing up soon in your favorite Linux distribution.

...The control panels seem to assume they know what's best, and don't allow much custimization.
...
the Mac is an attractive-looking car with hermetically-sealed innards; nobody knows how to fix it, but it rarely breaks, so nobody cares.

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This is an interesting point. Mac users typically just don't care about the
technology per se (ie: how to tweak, mod, et al) they just want it to work so
they can USE the investment to perform work. PC users just love to tweak, mod, and as the submarine captin says, 'You have the CON Mr ...'.

Defragmenting is poorly-implemented. Program uninstallation is confusing.

Click to expand...

What you know today as Norton Speed Disk came from a third party vendor for Mac.

All of the mouse-only operations were designed to avoid command line syntax that made the user conform to the system. {btw; it also works on Windows 3.1 and above} Who doesn't like click-hold and drag a file to another location as a replacement for 'move x.y ..\elsewhere'? Want to COPY rather than MOVE, Windows uses right-click to get a menu and you need to select Move vs Copy, Mac uses the <option> key and even the one button mouse can then Copy without a secondary selection.

All of the mouse-only operations were designed to avoid command line syntax that made the user conform to the system. {btw; it also works on Windows 3.1 and above} Who doesn't like click-hold and drag a file to another location as a replacement for 'move x.y ..\elsewhere'? Want to COPY rather than MOVE, Windows uses right-click to get a menu and you need to select Move vs Copy, Mac uses the <option> key and even the one button mouse can then Copy without a secondary selection.

Click to expand...

I think Mictlantecuhtli was saying drag to trash was the way you uninstall proggies in Mac. Of course, if he means drag the main Application's folder to the trash, many files would be left behind with this method, and you'd likely have to fix some file associations as well.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the occasional OS9 app came with an uninstaller.

It's pretty rare that you actually get an installer with OS X apps. Most apps are installed simply by copying/moving the contents of the CD/dmg file to your applications folder. Therefore uninstallation is simply removed the folder from the applications folder. Sure there may be some plist files laying around after you do that but I don't think I've ever seen any of them hurt another application. File associations are also not handled the same way on OS X as they are in Windows.

I am a big proponent of having multiple OSes. I have 7 Macs and maybe 15 PCs running a mix of Windows and Linux. I like all three OSes I mentioned, but the only one I couldn't live without is Windows.

not nearly as many as a PC, and the registry is another matter altogether.
99% of an applications resources are held in the Application file itself in the
resource fork (btw: Mac apps all have TWO eofs; one for the data (code)
and the other for the resources). The major 'other file(s)' would be the
/System/Preferences, and as you say, they just get orphaned. As they are
easily identified by name, they too can be trash, but it does take manual
intervention by the user. 'Hey; any body seen a silver bullet lying about'?

I don't know if I'd call installers for mac proggies rare, maybe uncommon. Linux Application installers seem to be becoming more common all the time. Flash player anyone?

Yes, uninstalls are typically much cleaner than a Windows uninstall. Being a 30-day-Trial-period junkie, my Mac OS9 would become more cumbersome, I assumed, from repeated install/uninstall of hundreds of demos. A back-up and clean install was quite nice once a year or so. Su much easier than meticulous cleaning of the OS after every uninstall.